Mexico: Yucatán's Natural Wonders

Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula is crowded with natural wonders, and on Tobias Nowlan's recent visit, he was able to experience several of them with the help of local guides. Below, he offers a quick selection of some of the region's more unusual adventures.

The Hanging Serpents

Bats rush around us as we near a cave partly concealed by dense rain forest. A stream of the silent mammals pours from the black cave mouth and diffuses into the forest.

It is dusk in the rain forest near the town of Kantemo on the Yucatán Peninsula. My guide, Solomon, has led me by bicycle along narrow puddle-strewn tracks to a path winding through a cluster of chico zapote trees (a species tapped for its resin and valued for its fruit). The path leads to the now legendary "Cave of the Hanging Serpents." In this cave, like nowhere else on earth, boa constrictors have adapted to hang from the ceiling and snatch bats (six species have been recorded in this single cave) as they take flight at dusk. Torchlight on an azure pool deep inside the cave exposes white, blind eels, fish and shrimp; animals adapted to a lightless underground life.

Getting there: Las Cuevas de Kantemo de los Serpientes Colgantes (the caves of Kantemo of the hanging serpents) can be reached via bus to the nearest large town (Puerto Maria Morelos) from where a taxi can be taken to Kantemo. Here visitors need to wait for a local guide (who may or may not speak English) to arrive at the small eco-center. Eco Travel Mexico is a tour company that takes people there: http://www.ecotravelmexico.com/kantemo.php

Post originale: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/10/hanging-serpents.html